Passion Interrupted

If he could have, Harvey Geisler would have slammed the door shut. Instead, the familiar swoosh sounded as the two panels slid together, sealing Harvey in his quarters. He turned and locked the door. Knowing the door would not open, Harvey leaned forward, allowing his head to rest on the door. After a moment, he pulled his head back and thrust it back forward, channeling all of his frustration into the blow.

"I didn't think it was that stressful," came the gentle, familiar voice of his wife, Alison, behind him.

Both officers had just finished their fourth evacuation drill in the last three days. The war had intensified and the Dominion were inching closer and closer to Betazed. Several Task Forces from the Third Fleet were beginning to assemble at Starbase 211 to prepare for a counteroffensive. Starfleet had already begun to evacuate families and civilians from the base as a precaution, hoping to bring them back in just a couple weeks. As both Geislers were technically part of the medical staff, they were assigned to evacuate the wounded who had begun to accumulate at the Starbase. Several dozen, the serious cases, had been moved to Betazed that morning.

"You didn't have to suffer through Beauregard's debriefing," Harvey countered, not turning from the door. "The man's unreasonable, blaming me for the entire department taking five minutes longer than the last drill."

Harvey wanted to continue his rant, detailing how the last two drills had been scheduled three hours apart with not enough time to both reset and rest. The wounded hadn't appreciated being jostled around so much during any of the drills, and they were the ones that needed the most rest. He wished he could even have one day in the lab, working on his projects that the war had forced into holding patterns once the wounded started pouring in two months ago.

He felt a touch on his shoulder, soft and loving. Slowly, it added pressure, pulling the shoulder back. Harvey, who just as easily could have resisted the force, surrendered to it. He turned to lock his gaze with Alison's, her eyes glowing with love. Her long red hair, normally held up by a clip, fell down her back. As Harvey's gaze followed the hair down, he took note of the revealing red satin slip she wore. It was his favorite.

Alison placed her hands on both sides of Harvey's head and gently directed his forehead to rest on her own. Her lips spread into a smile. "Let it go," she whispered, staring into his brown eyes. Her left hand began to stroke his wild hair. For as eccentric as Harvey was, she never quite understood why he gave no effort to tame his hair, always five inches long and barely kept to minimum standards.

Yet she constantly listed it has her favorite part about him.

Harvey stared deep into her own eyes, slowly realizing that she had infected him with her always contagious smile.

The next half hour was a blur, but lying next to each other under the bedsheets at the end of their tryst, still staring into each other's eyes was a pleasant ending to the day.

Harvey reached over to stroke her long, flowing red hair. "Why are you so good to me," he asked softly, knowing her answer.

He almost mouthed her response, "Because I love you too damn much." Alison smiled, her nerves tingling at his touch. She pushed herself forward, kissing Harvey one more time. "We could keep this up all night, you know," she teased him. "Make me the reason why you're tired during the next drill."

"I could live with that," Harvey replied, returning the kiss.

Alison pushed the sheets covering Harvey down, gently outlining his abs with her manicured index finger. Her heart continued to race, not from their previous intimate moment, but from nerves. She had news for him, something neither of them had expected. "Harvey, there's..."

Harvey quickly jumped in, interrupting the start of her confession with a kiss. Alison quickly succumbed to it, trading his passion for her own, resigning to tell him after this next round.

Just as they became senseless to their surroundings, Alison heard something abnormal. "Stop," she pressed, catching Harvey's attention. Their normally dim bedroom had suddenly taken a red hue. Alison had an engineering friend that she's coaxed into disabling the station's intercom in their bedroom, favoring instead a muffled voice to sound from the outer living room. Harvey slid aside as Alison hopped out of bed to open the door and hear the voice.

Alison, horrified, looked back to Harvey, who had darted out of bed and started to put back on his uniform. "I don't believe it!" she cried out, beginning to look for her own uniform.

Harvey had spotted her shirt and pants on the floor of the bathroom and tossed them at Alison. "I didn't think the Dominion could have gotten this far."

Alison caught the shirt and turned on the desktop terminal. Normally, sensor logs were kept restricted to station personnel, but it seemed the Commodore had changed his policy for this event. As Alison put on her shirt and zipped it up, she watched the playback of over a thousand Dominion and Cardassian ships drop out of warp just inside of sensor range. "My god," she muttered, momentarily pausing dressing herself. They were outnumbered four to one. There would be no winning this battle.

"What is it?" Harvey asked, officially clad in blue shirt and pants. He was trying to put his jacket back on when he saw what Alison was looking at. "We've got to hurry," he said, fighting to maintain his composure as he zipped up his jacket.

Alison shook as Harvey helped her get dressed. She was a strong woman, but reality had surprised her. Everything next seemed to happen slowly, from arriving to the medical bay to escorting the worst of the wounded to the shuttlebay. Despite how many had already evacuated, there were still nearly two hundred to move. Based on the drills, the medical and science personnel had to make at least five trips back and forth.

Somehow, they managed to do it in four.

"Keep it steady," Lieutenant Harvey Geisler warned the nurse who held the freshly applied stint to the man on the gurney. He guided the gurney into the shuttlebay as part of the last trip.

The shuttlebay manager directed Harvey to Cargo Shuttle 34. "They've engaged," the manager added, having grown tired of constantly being asked about updates on the Dominion Fleet. He wouldn't add any more as everyone already knew the efforts were useless save to buy a few more minutes on the evacuation.

Harvey focused on getting the gurney into the shuttle. Throughout the evacuation, he had become separated by Alison. They were Starfleet officers, and duty now was paramount.

And now was the first moment he thought of her. His gurney was the last to board Shuttle 34, but he did not walk up the ramp with it. Harvey stood at the bottom of the shuttle, slowly looking around the shuttlebay, hoping to spot Alison, hoping she wasn't on one of the shuttles that were now launching out of the bay.

"Hold on!" he snapped at the nurse who begged him to board the shuttle. Harvey had to see her before he left.

Across the shuttlebay, Alison directed a gurney of her own, carrying a badly burned Vulcan with a missing hand. He'd been sedated and somehow he had woken up along the trip to the shuttlebay. Alison asked for a hypo with some additional sedative. Normally, it would have been improper to administer so much sedative at one time for an individual, but she could safely speak for everyone on board her shuttle that the last thing they wanted on the voyage to Betazed was a screaming Vulcan.

As she pressed the hypospray to the squirming Vulcan's neck, Alison looked up to spot Harvey's gaze from all the way across the shuttlebay. Though she could barely make out his face due to the distance, his smile was clearly visible. Alison returned the smile. A shuttle suddenly darted between them. Once it had cleared, she noticed that Harvey had disappeared into his shuttle.

She kept her smile as she directed her gurney on board the shuttle. Alison worked with the nurse to secure the gurney to the shuttle walls.

It was only just after the shuttle launched that Alison realized that she didn't get the chance to tell Harvey the news! Alison sat down next to the sedated Vulcan and placed one hand on her abdomen. It would still be several weeks before she could feel the kick, but Alison swore she felt something.